Trip report: Lithuania
Visited in July 2019
While temperatures in Central Europe have been as high as in Sudan in recent weeks, the night in Lithuania felt like the deepest winter. 12°C showed my app when we left the airport building in Vilnius shortly before midnight. And this on July 5th. ‘What will it be like here in February?’ I asked myself. I had imagined the welcome in my 89th country to be warmer.
What fascinated me even more was the airport of the Lithuanian capital. It looked more like a train station than an airport. Alone the building of the arrival hall looked special. Because it doesn’t stand next to or one floor below the departure hall as it does at many airports, but in front of it. In the opposite case, if you depart from Vilnius and arrive at the airport by bus, you first have to go through the arrival hall before a new building appears which is the departure hall.
Even if you leave the arrival hall, the picture is not the same as at usual airports. As for example various bus stations, a taxi stand, further buildings that build up in front of you and the connection to a highway. That’s not the case in Vilnius though. No, it also looks like leaving a train station. There is a tiny parking lot right in front of the arrival hall, but only a few hundred meters further on, it seems as if you are already in the city.
However, the airport is indeed only a few kilometers away from the city. The drive to our hotel took only ten minutes and the 7 Euro I paid for the Uber could be a new record for taxi prices from the airport to the city center in a European capital.
After checking in, we went for a beer in the old town and were asked about three times to enter a strip club. “I will make a good deal for you,” said the bouncer, who looked as trustworthy as a skinhead in an American prison documentary. Apart from that, the old town looked lively. Not like Las Vegas, of course, but at least more than Bratislava, where I was three months before.
We didn’t spend much time in the city that night though. As we only had 36 hours in Lithuania, we didn’t want to sleep through the next day, the only day we had. Besides, it was cold anyway and thus uncomfortable. It was time to go to bed.
Vilnius – an old city with many view points
I have to admit that I rarely went on a trip with such an unbiased mind. Or one could also say so badly prepared as seldom. It was only the day before my departure that I first researched what there was to see and do in Vilnius. Also concerning restaurants or nightlife I made little or no research. I just wanted to be surprised.
That was a good decision, because visiting a city without having seen every street corner on a picture online beforehand was quite refreshing. Anyway, I liked Vilnius right from the beginning. It is an old city, the number of skyscrapers can be counted on one hand. Vilnius also seems to concentrate on maintaining the old city without adding too many modern elements.
Fun fact: Lithuania is a rather flat country, the highest point of the country is only 294m high. This makes Lithuania the fifth flattest country in Europe after the Vatican, Monaco, Denmark and Malta.
All the more beautiful it is therefore to look at Vilnius from an observation tower. So, the St. John’s Church next to the university became our first stop. For 3€ we bought a ticket for the bell tower, from where you have an excellent 360° view over Vilnius.
However, this is not the only viewpoint that Vilnius has to offer. Because about an hour later we were standing at the Gediminas Tower, another landmark of Vilnius. There, you get a view to the river and the other side of the city.
You can also see the city from above on the Hill of Three Crosses. The Lithuanians have some weird preference for crosses, I’ll come back to that later. Not far from Gediminas Tower there is a hill with three crosses about 5 meters high. I was most looking forward to this sight in Vilnius, however, the crosses look a lot smaller and less spectacular than on the pictures you can find online. Also the view is not as good as from the other two places we visited before.
The self-declared republic and standing upside down
Did you know that there is a self-declared republic in Vilnius? The Užupis district is situated on the edge of the old town and declared itself an independent republic on April Fool’s Day 1997. The quarter is quite alternative and you can find a constitution in several languages there. It says things like “everyone has the right to be unhappy” or “a dog has the right to be a dog“.
Užupis also has an army of 11 men, which is probably the smallest army in the world. The whole thing is not really meant seriously and it is a bit like Christiania in Copenhagen, just not so run-down and without open drug consumption on the street.
Užupis was a good place to have lunch and I liked the Lithuanian cuisine very much. In most cases it’s quite hefty food, which is strongly influenced by Russian cuisine. The low prices for food and drinks were an additional bonus.
The afternoon started with a funny attraction, the museum of illusions. This museum is located in the old town and offers good entertainment for 1-2 hours. The entrance fee of 11€ is not a bargain (you pay the same for a meal in Vilnius). But compared to the 12€ one pays for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (where one spends a maximum of 15-20 minutes, in my case rather 5 minutes), it is still value for money.
As the name suggests, everything in the museum is about illusions. In most cases, they are optical illusions, but sometimes also illusions that you feel physically. Next to all the exhibits is a description of what you have to do to see the illusion. Nevertheless, there are almost more employees than visitors in the museum, who help and advise you. This probably also explains the 11€ for the ticket.
The museum is a lot of fun and many of the exhibits have a wow effect. The highlight is the room where you stand or sit upside down on the ceiling.
The museum of illusions is certainly not a must-do when you are in Vilnius, as there are similar museums in other cities. However, it is a nice pastime and an alternative to classic sightseeing. I found it cool.
While Colin drove to a shopping mall afterwards, I spent another one to two hours in the old town. Finally there are many hidden, but beautiful alleys to discover.
You may ask how long does it take to see Vilnius? On TripAdvisor a user writes that she had been there for three weeks (!) with her husband and even that would not have been enough to see everything.
Basically, one full day is enough to see the most important things in my opinion. The city center is quite compact, which means you can visit everything on foot. I don’t know what the lady was doing during three weeks in a city with 544,000 inhabitants.
Of course, if you want to see every single church of the city, you will need more than one day. The only two things I missed were the KGB Museum and the island castle in Trakai. Trakai is 28km away from Vilnius. I could have visited it the next morning, as our flight was at 13.30, but I didn’t feel like it.
In the end I still had the feeling that I saw what I wanted to see. However, I would have liked to have spent an additional day in Vilnius. I liked the city, the quiet and pleasant atmosphere, the food and the friendly people.
Lithuania as a travel destination
Lithuania receives little attention compared to its two Baltic neighbors in the north. With Riga, Latvia has a capital that is ideal for a fun weekend with da boyz. Estonia has with Tallinn a unique fairytale city, which is suitable for everyone as a destination. And Lithuania? Vilnius rarely or never falls in the same sentence as Riga or Tallinn. And Kaunas, Lithuania’s second largest city, is even less considered.
Now that I’ve been to all three baltic countries, I have to say that this is unjustified! Maybe Tallinn is a bit more charming than Vilnius and Riga is wilder, but I think Vilnius is on a par with these two cities. Vilnius may even be a successful combination of Tallinn and Riga. The city is more beautiful than Riga and not so overrun by tourists like Tallinn. The city also feels more laid-back than the other Baltic capitals.
If you consider what else you can do in the Baltic countries besides the capitals, Lithuania would even be my first choice for a longer trip. In fact, the largest of the three Baltic countries offers some sights that would interest me. For example the Curonian Spit, a peninsula with beautiful nature at the border to Kaliningrad.
Lithuania also has a relatively high density of bizarre sights. In this article I have already mentioned a strange obsession with crosses. The Lithuanians take it to extremes with the Hill of Crosses in the north of the country. Google it. It looks absolutely creepy. Moreover, there is the Hill of Witches in Juodkrante, the Devil’s Museum in Kaunas or a grim reaper statue at the port of Klaipeda, the third largest city in the country. Such things always attract me. 🙂
The only bad thing (for me) about Lithuania is that there are no direct flights from Switzerland. And with almost 300 Euro the flights via Frankfurt are not cheap either. Too bad, because otherwise I would have passed by again soon. After all, only 36 hours do not do Lithuania justice. But for a longer trip the country still has to wait a while.
Find the travel reports of the other countries I’ve visited here!
